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The Times - Bribery is key to life (r)



Subject: Re: The Times - Bribery is key to life in Burma's death jail

The last paragraph of this story is important. Why did the thirty activists 
who planned to be arrested suddenly change their minds? If  they're afraid 
of going to jail, then the movement is in real trouble.

Nobody wants to go to jail - but it means we only stand up to SPDC if we 
know there won't be any consequences. I don't think Daw Suu would be very 
impressed. Looks like either we're all just playing games, or we're all 
cowards. Committed to democracy in Burma, as long as we can sleep in our own 
beds at night.

The arrest of James and Rachel is a challenge. SPDC has thrown down the 
gauntlet. If everybody backs down in fear, if no one else goes in to be 
arrested, then SPDC has won, and what Rachel and James have done will be in 
vain.

Protesting in front of Tony Blair's house is a pretty lame response.
Anyone who calls themselves a "freedom fighter" should be willing to earn 
that title. No fair just blaming Blair or the Foreign Office. This is 
supposed to be a people's movement.


>From: "TIN KYI" <tinkyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: "TIN KYI" <tinkyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>To: <burmanet2-l@xxxxxxxx>
>CC: <burmanet-l@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: The Times - Bribery is key to life in Burma's death jail
>Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 01:01:20 +0900
>
>Bribery is key to life in Burma's death jail
>Posted on 9/20/99, 08:49 AM CST. Email this story to a friend.
>Source: The Times.
>Posted by: ShweInc NEWs
>
>ON THE outskirts of Rangoon stands Insein prison. Burma's oldest jail, 
>built
>by the British, has wings branching out like the points of a star from a
>central octagon. It is a striking monument to the cruelty and oppression of
>a military Government that cracks down brutally on dissenters.
>
>Rachel Goldwyn, 28, who was led through the three sets of steel doors into
>Women's Hall No 1 last week, will have been given a taste already of what
>life will become as she starts a seven-year sentence for her protest 
>against
>the country's State Peace and Development Council.
>
>Although the title sounds benign, she will learn at first hand that
>political prisoners in Insein are treated below the level of rapists and
>murderers. Only the fact that she is British and her predicament is subject
>to international scrutiny will weigh in her favour.
>
>Insein is a place of death: by beating, by deprivation and by lack of
>medical facilities. Many political prisoners have lost their minds,
>according to Win Naing Oo, an organiser of the All-Burma Students 
>Democratic
>Front, who survived to write a report entitled Cries from Insein.
>
>In the prison instruction cell, inmates are taught how to act and behave.
>During roll call, they have to sit cross-legged with their arms straight,
>fists on the knees and face down. When an official walks by they must show
>obeisance by squatting, with their arms straight on the knees, the back 
>held
>straight back and head down. To show respect when standing in front of an
>official, inmates must stand with their hands crossed infront and hold 
>their
>heads down.
>
>When punishment is meted out, prisoners stand on tip-toes, knees bent at 45
>degrees with back straight, hands clasped behind the head and face raised.
>Inmates are beaten and kicked into this position. Prisoners can also be 
>sent
>to the "dog cell", formerly a kennel, where they are kept in total darkness
>and forced to lie in their own excrement.
>
>Prisoners receive two meals a day: breakfast comprises rice, pea curry -
>usually without any peas - and fish paste. In the evening they get 
>vegetable
>soup, fish paste and rice. The quality of the rice is poor. Inmates are
>allowed to bath once a day and wash their clothes once a week. Prisoners
>bath by scooping water out of a trough and pouring it over themselves.
>Unless they can bribe a guard, they are allowed only nine shallow dinner
>plates of water.
>
>Everything in Insein runs on bribes. Political prisoners are despised
>because they refuse to pay the guards and are subject to beatings. Bribes
>are paid for extra water, food, medicine and also for access to the prison
>hospital, which is occupied not by the sick but by drugs syndicate bosses
>who book the beds for the better food and lifestyle. Bribes are paid to 
>gain
>seniority and to become hall "trusties", jobs which usually go to the most
>hardened criminals in the prison's 10,000 population. Political prisoners
>are not given any books and no one is allowed to own a pen. When political
>prisoners went on hunger strike to protest at the harsh conditions, all 
>were
>beaten, several to the point of death, according to Win Naing Oo.
>
>More than 40 political prisoners have died in Insein since 1988; the most
>notorious was the case of Leo Nichols, the consul for Scandinavian 
>countries
>in Burma, who died in 1997. He had been jailed for possessing an illegal 
>fax
>machine.
>
>Ms Goldwyn may draw some comfort from the fact that, while political
>prisoners are hated by the authorities, they are respected by other
>prisoners, who understand that they are fighting for the rights of the
>Burmese people.
>
>Yozo Yokota, the United Nations special rapporteur, who visited the jail in
>1996, was banned from talking to the prisoners. But according to his
>information, prisoners were routinely tortured by "near-suffocation,
>burning, stabbing and rubbing of salt and chemicals into wounds". They were
>also sent as punishment to work in chain gangs.
>
>About 30 Western activists have cancelled plans to be arrested in Burma 
>this
>week (Helen Rumbelow writes). Rachel Goldwyn's mother, a GP, her father and
>two other daughters met at their southwest London home yesterday to launch 
>a
>campaign to win her release. The family have not been granted visas to 
>visit
>her in prison and will appeal today to the Burmese Ambassador.
>
>
>

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